Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent S.A. was a multinational telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris, France. The company focused on fixed, mobile and converged networking hardware, IP technologies, software and services, and operated between 2006 and 2016 in more than 130 countries.
The American company Lucent Technologies was acquired by the France-based Alcatel in 2006, after which the latter renamed itself to Alcatel-Lucent. Lucent was a successor of AT&T's Western Electric and a holding company of Bell Labs. In 2014, the Alcatel-Lucent group split into two: Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, providing enterprise communication services, and Alcatel-Lucent, selling to communications operators. The enterprise business was sold to China Huaxin Post and Telecom Technologies in the same year, and in 2016 Nokia acquired the remainder of Alcatel-Lucent. On 3 November 2016, Nokia completed the acquisition, retired the brand name and merged it into their Nokia Networks division. Bell Labs was maintained as an independent subsidiary of Nokia.
History
Predecessor companies
Alcatel-Lucent was formed when Alcatel merged with Lucent Technologies on 1 December 2006. However, the predecessors of the company have been a part of telecommunications industry since the late 19th century. The company has roots in two early telecommunications companies: La Compagnie Générale d'Électricité and the Western Electric Manufacturing Company.Western Electric began in 1869 when Elisha Gray and Enos N. Barton started a manufacturing firm based in Cleveland, Ohio, US. By 1880, the company had relocated to Chicago, Illinois, and become the largest electrical manufacturing company in the United States. In 1881, the American Bell Telephone Company, founded by Alexander Graham Bell and forerunner of American Telephone & Telegraph, purchased a controlling interest in Western Electric and made it the exclusive developer and manufacturer of equipment for the Bell telephone companies.
CGE was formed in 1898 by French engineer Pierre Azaria in the Alsace region of what was then Germany and was a conglomerate involved in industries such as electricity, transportation, electronics and telecommunications. CGE would become a leader in digital communications and would also be known for building the TGV high-speed trains in France.
Bell Telephone Laboratories was created in 1925 from the consolidation of the R&D organizations of Western Electric and AT&T. Bell Labs would make significant scientific advances including the transistor, the laser, the solar cell, the digital signal processor chip, the Unix operating system and the cellular concept of mobile telephone service. Bell Labs researchers have won 7 Nobel Prizes.
Also in 1925, Western Electric sold its International Western Electric Company subsidiary to ITT Corporation. CGE purchased ITT's telecommunications division in the mid-1980s.
AT&T re-entered the European telecommunications market in 1984 following the Bell System divestiture. Philips promoted the venture in part because its PRX public switching technology was aging, and it sought a partner to help fund the development costs of digital switching. The joint company used the existing manufacturing and development facilities in The Hague, Hilversum, Brussels and Malmesbury as well as its U.S. resources to adapt the 5ESS system to the European market. The joint venture company AT&T & Philips Telecommunications BV doubled annual turnover between 1984 and 1987, winning major switching and transmission contracts, mainly in the effectively captive Netherlands market. In 1987, AT&T increased its holding to 60% and in 1990 it purchased the remainder of the Philips' holding.
In 1998, Alcatel Alsthom shifted its focus to the telecommunications industry, spinning off its Alsthom activities and changing the company's name to Alcatel. AT&T spun off Lucent Technologies in April 1996 with an initial public offering.
In February 2000, Alcatel acquired Canada's Newbridge Networks.
In April 2004, TCL Corporation and Alcatel announced the creation of a mobile phone manufacturing joint venture: Alcatel Mobile Phones. A year later Alcatel sold its share in the joint venture but licensed the Alcatel brand name to TCL, which continues to this day under Nokia.
In April 2006, Alcatel announced that it would swap its shares of Alcatel Alenia Space and Telespazio for €673 million and a 12.1% stake in Thales, a key player in the French defence industry. This increased Alcatel's stake in Thales to 20.8%.
Creation of Alcatel-Lucent
Facing intense competition in the telecommunications industry, Alcatel and Lucent Technologies merged on 30 November 2006.2006–2015
Alcatel-Lucent acquired Nortel's UMTS radio access business at the end of 2006. During 2007 the company acquired Canadian metro WDM networking supplier Tropic Networks, Inc.; enterprise services gateway products developer NetDevices; IPTV software company Tamblin; and the telecommunications consulting practice Thompson Advisory Group, Inc. Alcatel-Lucent had a joint venture with Dutch company Draka Holding N.V. for manufacturing optical fibre, but Draka bought out Alcatel-Lucent's 49.9% stake for €209 million in December 2007. Motive, Inc., a Texas-based provider of service management software for broadband and mobile data services, was acquired in 2008.Ben Verwaayen was appointed as chief executive officer in September 2008 after Alcatel-Lucent's first CEO, Patricia Russo, and first chairman, Serge Tchuruk, resigned. In May 2009, Alcatel-Lucent's stake in Thales was acquired by Dassault Aviation. Alcatel-Lucent announced the acquisition of OpenPlug on 1 September 2010.
For 2010, the company had revenues of €16 billion and a reported net loss of €334 million.
In 2011, Alcatel-Lucent moved the remaining workforce and equipment from Columbus, Ohio, 6200 East Broad Street, to Dublin, Ohio, 5475 Rings Road The former location was the Columbus Works manufacturing facility, which began in 1957 by Western Electric. During the early 2000s, the location had reduced workforce and less manufacturing needs under Lucent Technologies. Upon the merger, Alcatel-Lucent in October 2007, decided to cease productions and release additional 230 positions from the location. The decision for the move from Columbus to Dublin was from a large manufacturing facility with only 500 office employees at the office and 100 others working off-site, to a smaller 120,000 square foot two-tower building of office space for the workforce. Also, a $10 million tax incentive was provided from the State of Ohio, to assist in the relocation costs and keep the telecommunications workforce in the region. The work done at Dublin was in new-generation cell sites, 3G, 4G applications, and 4G LTE technologies.
In October 2011, Alcatel-Lucent sold its Genesys call-centre services business unit to Permira, a private equity group, for $1.5 billion—the same amount that Lucent had paid for the business in 2000. Alcatel-Lucent needed funding for the Franco-American business, which made annual losses from 2007 to 2011.
For 2011, revenues were €15 billion, with a net loss of €1.1 billion. For 2012, revenues were €14.4 billion and the net loss €1.4 billion. After seven consecutive years of negative cash flows, in October 2013 the company announced plans to cut 10,000 employees, 14% of the 72,000 workforce, as part of a €1 billion cost reduction effort.
In April 2013, Michel Combes succeeded Verwaayen as CEO. On 19 June 2013, Combes announced "The Shift Plan", a three-year plan including refocusing the portfolio on IP networking, ultra-broadband access and cloud; €1 billion in cost savings; selective asset sales intended to generate at least €1 billion over the period of the plan; and the restructuring of the group's debt.
In 2014, a Bell Labs location was opened in Kfar Sava, a suburb of Tel Aviv, Israel. It was expected to research cloud services, complementing another Tel Aviv location set up by Alcatel in 1985 which was the global research center for the Cloudband product.
On 1 October 2014, the company announced that it had closed the sale of its subsidiary Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise to China Huaxin Post & Telecommunication Economy Development Center.
In 2014, the Italian labs for the management system for terrestrial networks and two families of equipment for fiber optic telecommunications—OMSN and TSS —were transferred to a new dedicated company, SM Optics, a subsidiary of the Siae Microelettronica group.
Undersea communications and operations
Alcatel had a long history of domestic and global work in laying the infrastructure of undersea routes for telecommunications. Purchases by Alcatel in the 1990s included the Enderby's Wharf site on the Thames in London, where cables were made from the 1850s; and Les Câbles de Lyon at Calais, established in 1891.By 2004, Alcatel had several cable ships in undersea operations. According to service logs, there were four ships operated by Louis Dreyfus Armatuers: Ile de Batz, Ile de Brehat, Ile de Re, Ile de Sein. At the same time, Alcatel had a subsidiary, Alcatel Submarine Networks Marine A/S, with cable ships, Heimdal and Lodbrog. Another subsidiary, Alcatel Contracting Norway AS, operated CS Stanelco.
Since Alcatel was a manufacturer of telecommunication components for undersea cables, they also used company repeaters in their operations. Repeaters are used for amplification of the copper cable voice transmission over long distance undersea cables. The manufacturing location, operating since 1858, was in Greenwich, UK for the production of amplifiers, repeaters, and other submerged equipment.
Between May 2008 and September 2010, Alcatel-Lucent completed 10,000 kilometers of two-fiber-pair cabling on the EASSy link. Alcatel-Lucent used DWDM technology to transmit SDH frames over nine stations connecting South Africa to Sudan using this undersea fiber cabling type.
In 2011, the Alcatel CS Ile de Sein assisted in recovering the Air France Flight 447 data recorder in the Atlantic. A remotely operated vehicle from Phoenix International Inc. assisted the ship. Alcatel-Lucent purchased a cable ship named CS Gulmar Badaro, in 2011 renaming it CS Ile d'Aix for further expansion of operations. This vessel was built in 1992 and had facilities for cable laying and repair.
A manufacturing location for analogue systems and seismic sensors in Trondheim, Norway, was acquired by Alcatel-Lucent in November 2014.
In 2015, Alcatel-Lucent renewed their partnership with Louis Dreyfus Armateurs. Alcatel-Lucent took ownership of all seven ships in the fleet, which would be operated by LDA.
In 2016, Bell Labs achieved a 6,600 kilometer single mode transoceanic fiber for Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks deployment, after the Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent merger occurred. By this time, 580,000 kilometers of optical submarine cables/systems had been deployed globally by Alcatel-Lucent.